Support Your Pregnant Belly With A Baby Carrier

During pregnancy with my second son, I learned that some of my baby carriers could help support the belly during pregnancy. I wrapped my belly starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy to help with my chronic pelvic instability. (Pregnant women may also know this as symphysis pubis dysfunction or pelvic girdle pain. The difference with mine is that it may never go away).

I decided to use a woven wrap to lift and support the belly and give some compression to my back. A woven wrap is the sophisticated older brother of the stretchy wrap. They both are long pieces of fabric designed to wear a baby, but a woven wrap holds firm on the horizontal and vertical while stretching on the diagonal. This gives a much more supportive fit than a stretchy wrap can. Woven wraps have a higher price point than stretchies but also have a longer, more versatile life.

Wearing the wrap was more breathable and comfortable than even my mega-strength belly band. Sometimes I felt rather bold wearing my support outside of my clothes rather than underneath, but it was worth it!

Some women like to do the same kind of thing with a ring sling. Personally, I found that the ring sling could not actually lift the belly or stabilize my pelvis and hips, but it could give some belly compression. At the end of my pregnancy, I wanted to coax baby to flip face-down, and out of that pesky occiput posterior position, so I used a ring sling to apply gentle-but-firm pressure. It didn’t persuade my little guy to turn, but maybe it will work for some other mama out there. See the ring sling method in action on You Tube.

Pamm Fontana

Pamm Fontana blogs at More Green for Less Green, living more eco-friendly for less money + bringing attachment parenting to life. In addition to parenting two boys (and a baby on the way), she works with hundreds of families as a director in a large and thriving children's ministry, teaches attachment parenting classes in the greater Washington, D.C. area, and volunteers as a babywearing educator.
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4 thoughts on “Support Your Pregnant Belly With A Baby Carrier”

Please honor the fact that this has been a practice taking place for millennia and upheld and maintained by indigenous women all over the world!!! And probably it would be a great idea to direct part of the money you are earning from teaching “advanced baby wearing classes” to indigenous communities and their search for independence and freedom!!!

This is a pretty obnoxious comment. The practice of supporting a pelvis during pregnancy is assuredly something that has been upheld and maintained by women of *every culture* for millenia. And p.s. It states in her bio that she volunteers to teach babywearing… so probably there are no proceeds to donate.

The article falsely accuses this article of claiming to have “discovered” this method. The article above clearly states that she “learned” about the benefits of this, not that she was the first woman to ever come up with the idea. In many of the “indigenous cultures” you reference, this is common practice and knowledge is shared freely. In Western/developed societies where this practice has fallen out of favor, women need to rely on the internet and classes to learn these techniques. There’s nothing wrong with sharing information and empowering mothers.

If you read the comments under the toast.net article, you will read that Pamm Fontana, the author of this article, acknowledges that she initially wrote “discovered” but would be happy to make the edit to “learned” as that was her intended meaning.